Tag: literature

On this day in 1771 – exactly 240 years ago, in other words – the Scottish novelist Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) died in Italy. Like Henry Fielding, another of the eighteenth-century founders of the English novel, he had travelled to the… Continue reading

William Makepeace Thackeray, Victorian novelist probably best known for his panoramic work Vanity Fair and its anti-heroine, Becky Sharp, was born in Calcutta on 18 July 1811. While his work does not, on the whole, reflect the medical profession of… Continue reading

The Library has recently added to the catalogue a copy of Marie Stopes’ little-known first (and only) novel, Love’s Creation, published in 1928 under the rather transparent pseudonym of ‘Marie Carmichael’ (Stopes’ mother’s maiden name was Carmichael and her own… Continue reading

Recently re-discovered in a corner of the storage rooms was a modest, thin volume that revealed the economic hope of the future in earlier times, when faith was placed in one man. It was none other than David Lloyd George,… Continue reading

In the weeks before Christmas work proceeded on various long-running projects within and outside the online database. As mentioned last month, behind the scenes retroconversion work continues on the catalogue of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists (SA/CSP), completion of which… Continue reading

Bright as the silvery plume, or pearly shell, The snow-white rose, or lily’s virgin bell, The fair HELLEBORAS attractive shone, Warm’d every Sage, and every Shepherd won. With winter closed about us and the last leaves of autumn lost to… Continue reading

For fourteen years I have not had a day’s real health; I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary; and I have done my work unflinchingly. I have written in bed, and written out of it, written in hemorrhages… Continue reading

Elizabeth Gaskell, the novelist, was born 200 years ago today, on 29th September 1810. The huge success of the BBC’s version of Cranford (which added several of her other short stories to the adaptation) and, a few years before that,… Continue reading

One hundred and ten years ago, two doctors confronted one another in South London. One, in his fifties at the time, was the acknowledged leader in his field. The other, ten years younger, was a few years into a stellar… Continue reading

The weekend 9th to 11th July saw a fascinating conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the H. G. Wells Society, ‘H. G. Wells: From Kent to Cosmopolis’, held in the appropriate setting of the Darwin College Conference Suite at the… Continue reading